‘Masters of Sex’ TV Recap: Season 2, Episode 1, ‘Parallax’

Season 1 of “Masters of Sex” ended on a trite yet steamy note with a soggy Bill Masters (Michael Sheen) turning up at the doorstep of Virginia Johnson (Lizzy Caplan). He lost his job at Washington University after a controversial presentation of the sex study into which he and Virginia had poured blood, sweat, and sexual fluids. Also, his wife just had a baby he’s not keen on fathering. To add to the complications, Bill doesn’t know that Ethan (Nicholas D’Agosto) proposed to Virginia.

Season two picks up nearly where things left off, weaving between the events of that rainy night, a separate evening at a hotel, and the realities the characters face since the presentation shook things up in Pleasantville. Side note: I’m not certain I’ll be able to watch a single episode of this season without thinking about this intriguing and adorable coupling (especially since Sarah Silverman has a recurring role this season):

Getty Images

But back to fiction. Virginia is sexually harassed by doctors at every turn because they think they saw her breasts on the big screen during the study presentation. Maybe, though, they are flocking to her because she looks radiant. Virginia’s hair has grown out at an unprecedented rate! Her bangs, or “fringe” for our British readers, look stunning at this length and her new makeup is on point. But I digress. She has turned down Ethan’s marriage proposal and is strapped for cash since the study has been cancelled. Oddly, she has resorted to selling diet pills…

Barton Scully (Beau Bridges) is put through the wringer to start off the season. The Washington University Provost, has elected to undergo electroshock therapy to “cure” his homosexuality, in order to save his marriage. (At the end of last season, his wife, Margaret, portrayed by Allison Janney, figured out he’s gay.) Margaret does not condone the therapy, which means Masters is attending appointments with Barton in secret. The imagery of a nun restraining Barton’s convulsing body is not the most upsetting visual of his character this episode.

Libby Masters (Caitlin FitzGerald) knows her husband, Bill, can only maintain his sanity if he’s working into the wee hours of the night, so she’s hustling to find him a job at Memorial Hospital. The person who ultimately is able to get Bill exactly what he wants—an obstetrics position at the hospital and funding for his study—is the oblivious Pretzel King, whom Bill runs into at a fundraiser. As a refresher from season 1, Gene the Pretzel King is married to Betty Dimello, a lesbian prostitute whom Masters and Johnson were using for their research. Betty married Gene, a wealthy owner of a pretzel company, as a way out. Gene has no idea his wife prefers women OR that her tubes are tied (Masters does) and Gene is mainly helping Masters so Masters can help the couple conceive. This isn’t going to be pretty. (Excitingly, Dimello has been promoted to season regular.)

Back at the Scully household, Barton is looking at male pornography to get in the mood for his wife. I’m embarrassed to look at Allison Janney’s breasts while sitting at my desk at work so I’ve opened another tab and can’t completely report back on why the incident goes awry, although the encounter isn’t going well, based on Margaret yelling, “You can’t pretend I’m something else.” Jokes aside, this scene is done beautifully. It’s torturous.

Bill, we discover, lands the job as head of obstetrics at Memorial and Libby awkwardly discovers over dinner that her husband will resume the study with Virginia. The slime ball hiring Bill, Dr. Douglas Greathouse (Danny Huston), seems a bit too interested in the inner-workings of the sex study. How will this unfold?

Bill’s anger toward his mother leads to one of the most arresting scenes of an emotionally fraught episode. When Bill is left alone with his son for a few hours, he’s panic-stricken (Sheen’s sweet spot). The baby wails in the other room and Bill’s solution is that of any model parent: blasting the Everly Brothers’s “Bye Bye Love” to drown out the noise… “Hello emptiness, I feel like I could die.” Remember, we learned in season 1 that Bill’s mother used this technique to mask the sounds of Bill’s father beating him

The music is turned off and Bill turns to find his mother comforting her grandson. Bill doesn’t appreciate what he considers her intrusion and uses the opportunity to berate her, which includes telling her that he has sex with Virginia regularly and plans to continue doing so. He also drives the point home that unfortunately, he’s turning out to be much like his parents.

Cut to Bill telling Libby that his mother is going back to Ohio. Golly gosh, the wonders some bi-weekly therapy appointments could do for Bill Masters.

Vivian Scully (daughter of Margaret and Barton) is talking to her mother about leaving home for nursing school, which is yet another blow to Margaret and Barton’s marriage. This conversation is all going on while, we soon discover, Barton attempts to hang himself in their basement. Vivian and Margaret are able to save him, but this leaves us to wonder if the suicide attempt was a side effect of electroshock, or Barton feeling desperate and out of choices. The entire storyline is heartbreaking.

At the conclusion of the episode, we’re left in a hotel lobby 30 minutes outside of St. Louis with Bill, Virginia, and two martinis. It’s the night after he went over her house (oh yeah, when they had torrid sex) and they’re sorting out how to move forward.

“An affair is a pedestrian thing and always ends the same,” says Virginia. “What we have between us is so much more than that. We have work.”

It seems that Bill is interested in a deeper kind of commitment with Virginia which would involve sex without wires, but her down-to-business perspective makes Bill hold back. “I think you may have misunderstood what happened between us,” he says in response, misty-eyed. “I don’t want you to feel like you’ve been led on.” He maintains the stance that their relationship is for the work, despite having told her he can’t live without her the night before.

Bill then heads to the concierge desk where he asks to check in under the name Dr. Francis Holden. The two, it seems, will continue with the “work,” conducting their studies as a married couple under that name.

Thomas Maier, the author of “Masters of Sex,” which the show is based upon, wrote an essay for Time recently. He says, “At its heart… you might say that Masters of Sex—the book and the show—is a postmodernist parable about the limits of science; how modern medicine can never truly understand our deepest, most intimate feelings.” Seems like this season, Bill will be tackling this conundrum with more resolve.

About Speakeasy

Speakeasy is a blog covering media, entertainment, celebrity and the arts. The publication is produced by Barbara Chai and Jonathan Welsh with contributions from the Wall Street Journal staff and others. Write to us at speakeasy@wsj.com or follow us on Twitter at @WSJSpeakeasy or individually @barbarachai.